It’s always hard to grab students’ attention at careers fares when the guys in the corner have a tank to play with. But the latest communications technology offers some attention grabbers that can also demonstrate that innovation isn’t just a word in the recruitment blurb.

Mobile apps offer the opportunity to link on a very personal level with graduates. With the potential for downloads at career fairs as well as from your website they bring an instant buzz factor and, if the app has been designed for long-term usefulness, they can help build long-term relationships.

Essentially, there’s the option to focus either on smart functionality or brilliant content. The latter is not the easy option since simply providing a mobile download of your web content is unlikely to hold the attention unless it is suffused with the wit of a Stephen Fry. Smart functionality can range from harnessing the mobile phone features such as camera and location or linking to social networks, such as Twitter and Linkedin. Local area networking is a feature that could be used to share information at an event as well as providing students with ongoing file-sharing capability in their own networks.

We recommend centering your app around a theme, whether it relates directly to your company or to a broader area such as a general careers manager which could carry your brand banner.

Touch screens are not limited to iphones and rail ticketing machines.  The latest technology touch screens can use any glass surface from a coffee table to a large exhibition panel to project an interactive display through the glass.  Those who have seen the film ‘Minority Report’, will have an idea of just what can be achieved using this technology and how exciting that could be in an event space.

Creating an interesting and visually captivating journey within the software environment of the display is key to successful user engagement. None of us gets too excited about ticket machines, or just using a finger to point at a website.  A true minority report experience requires creativity and visual excitement, but need not break budgets.

Whichever digital experience fits the practicalities of your recruitment campaign, creating an interesting and visually captivating journey will ensure your company projects the up to date image this year’s high flyers will appreciate. Attracting innovators has the potential to feed energy into the cycle of innovation and creativity that is vital to the competitiveness of organisations today.

Since the launch of the ipad the excitement about mobile apps which has been creating a buzz in the tech world for a couple of years has exploded into the mainstream. The Number of apps available and the number of downloads are reported in numbers too large to compute and it’s been predicted that mobile phone app growth will be ten-fold in the next decade. The birth of new technology brings with it the emergence of new cultural practices. It’s not the technology as such, but the change in consumer behaviour that’s significant. We now want relevant information when we want it. A desire made possible through application technology and it goes into all aspects of our daily lives: The future holds apps in television set-top boxes, in car electronics, for personal and increasingly for business communications.

Although RIM’s Blackberry has previously  dominated business, the iphone is quickly emerging as the premier wireless smart phone device and is gaining popularity in the corporate world. Of late, iphone apps have come to play a major role in business travel as senior executives rely more and more on their iphone for basic business tasks, such as grabbing data from the company’s computer system, managing a website as well as viewing, editing and storing word and excel documents. One new application and a great example of app use in business is “Shoeboxed”. Available free, it digitises your receipts and lets you generate an expense report on your phone. Ultimately, with the move to cloud computing where content and software are served from the web rather than the desktop, the iphone and ipad replace the laptop and allow for lighter travel with less to worry and hassle. It could even offer a paperless office solution in the near future. In regards to developer support, the iphone definitely has the momentum over rivals.

According to RIM, 80% of their new subscriptions (for the Blackberry) are consumers and not businesses. Once the corporate phone of choice, the Blackberry is becoming increasingly popular with …teenagers. Perhaps the antithesis of a financial company’s business leaders, the new Blackberry owner demands more entertainment apps (Games, Music) and therefore, RIM developers are focusing more and more on this type of application. We predict that the Blackberry will slowly go out of fashion as a business accessory.

Apps in Finance – where do we stand and where are we going?

Bank of America has been in the news with some very impressive figures on new adoption rates of their mobile phone application. The mobile banking app includes an ATM locator, balance checking, transfers and bill payment and has attracted more than 200 000 users to the new service each month. Excellent results, but could they have gone further? Their app combines services that are individually already available for mobile, missing the opportunity to add value to the apps market. Keeping in mind the importance of internet banking to both providers and users, the future should bring excellent opportunities for a range of financial services applications. How about an app for applying for a personal loan, a travel insurance app or a risk appetite app? As Brett King, author of BANK2.0 and founder of the International Academy of Financial Management summarises: “We are about to enter another phase of disruptive technology innovation. It is time for banks to make fundamental changes to adapt to the networked consumer”.

Clearly, it’s a dynamic time for application development. However, be aware that in order to launch a successful app, it’s necessary to have a sound application development and launch strategy to meet market needs and to get noticed amongst the thousands of available applications.